


Training

by terri_testing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dumbledore/Snape - Freeform, M/M, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, One-Sided Relationship, Sort Of, Unconsummated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-11-06 09:19:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17937095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terri_testing/pseuds/terri_testing
Summary: How to train to maintain Occlumency shields under extreme pain, fear, and physical stress, is by practicing trying to maintain Occlumency shields while undergoing pain, fear, and physical stress.And it would be wrong for Albus Dumbledore to withhold much-needed training from his newest agent merely because he finds the training disturbing.Right?Or:  Dumbledore trains Snape, and is trained.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the terminal: the light  
> Gives perfect vision, false and hard;  
> The metal glitters, deep and bright.  
> Great planes are waiting in the yard—  
> They are already in the night.
> 
> And you are here beside me, small,  
> Contained and fragile, and intent  
> On things that I but half recall—  
> Yet going whither you are bent.  
> I am the past, and that is all.
> 
> But you and I in part are one:  
> The frightened brain, the nervous will,  
> The knowledge of what must be done,  
> The passion to acquire the skill  
> To face that which you dare not shun.
> 
> The rain of matter upon sense  
> Destroys me momently. The score:  
> There comes what will come. The expense  
> Is what one thought, and something more—  
> One’s being and intelligence.
> 
> This is the terminal, the break.  
> Beyond this point, on lines of air  
> You take the way that you must take  
> And I remain in light and stare—  
> In light, and nothing else, awake.
> 
> Yvor Winters, “At the San Francisco Airport”

_This is the terminal, the break._

 

“More,” Severus gasped desperately.  He looked ghastly crouched there on the headmaster’s rug, pale and shuddering, sunken eyes rimmed with purple, but the black eyes held Albus’s with a fierce determination.

 

_(“More,” Gellert gasped desperately.  “Oh, Albus, more!”)_

 

Albus flinched at the untoward memory and let his wand sag.   Why should that image rise up to haunt him now?  The golden boy from his past and this dark one had nothing at all in common. 

 

Well, except for that taint at the core, of course, their fatal yearning for the dark.

 

And their passio—that is to say, their intensity.

 

He stared at the boy before him, his wand lowered and his mental shields clamped tight.

 

Snape’s head fell forward in surrender at the unexpected reprieve.  His hair, tangled, greasy, and black, hid his sallow features. 

 

Albus was horrified to feel his member stir at the sight. 

 

A moment later, the boy suddenly convulsed and vomited all over the rug. 

 

Albus vanished the mess and tried to ignore his inappropriate personal reaction.  Fortunately, his robes were ample and his facial control exemplary, so Severus couldn’t suspect.

 

The boy levered himself up, struggling against the poison-induced nausea and pain.  He raised his pinched face invitingly and grated out again, “More.” 

 

 

This time Albus accepted the invitation. _“Legilimens!”_

 

His wand—Gellert’s wand, why was he thinking of that now?—was warm and responsive in his hand.

 

And this time, the boy failed to keep him out.  Albus dove full into those dark eyes.

 

Only for a momentary swirl of imagined nightmare:  a red-haired girl screaming in agony while the dark boy watched, bound and helpless—

 

\--And was thrust out again.

 

But he’d been in, and, worse, seen the very fears that the boy most needed to hide. 

 

Severus groaned despairingly, and Albus hastened to Accio the poison’s antidote.

 

He offered it, saying “Rest before we try again.”

 

The boy snarled, “The Dark Lord isn’t resting!”

 

“But you must, Severus.”  He made his own voice calm.  “We’re training you for the worst case, and in training one must walk before one can run.”

 

The boy tried to sneer at Albus’s platitude, but he was shaking too hard to make the sneer convincing.  After a moment he consented to uncap the phial and drink.

 

Albus motioned the boy to the chair.  It took Severus two tries to struggle to his feet, but Albus knew better than to offer his assistance.  When the boy had finally settled himself, Albus handed him a cup of tea.  Mint and valerian, well sugared; Severus grimaced at the taste.  But he drank it dutifully.

 

Albus made his voice utterly placid.  “Drink, rest for a time, and we’ll try again.”

 

It had been so easy to enter that last time.  Had he been holding back before?  That didn’t serve the boy’s needs; Tom Riddle would never hold back, for any reason.  If Albus had been holding back unconsciously, out of distaste for this whole training… well, had that been so, he’d been doing the boy a grave disservice. 

 

This practice was utterly against Albus’s preferences.  But having agreed to provide it—and he did see the necessity—he was bound to do it _right_ , to give the boy’s shields a rigorous test. 

 

The boy was cradling the cup against his face in those long pale fingers.  His eyes were shut, the sooty lashes fluttering slightly.  The thin cheeks were slightly flushed from the warmth and sugar, and the boy had sunk back a little in his chair.

 

 “Are you ready for more?” Albus asked, and was surprised to hear the roughness in his voice.

 

Severus’s answer was to set the cup down, draw a phial of poison from his pocket, and gulp another dose. 

 

After a moment he hunched over, sweating, his arms clutched involuntarily around his middle.  This time he didn’t fall from his chair.  White and shaking, he looked over to meet Albus’s eyes.

 

And they tried again.

 

*

 

_“More!”  Gellert cries, his face contorted in ecstasy._

 

And Albus woke, his sweat soaking the bed and chilling him.

 

He groped for his wand (Gellert’s wand, whispered some voice in his mind) and cast a rough Evanesco on himself and his bedding.  He was left dry and cocooned in his blameless sheets.

 

Trying not to remember.

 

“More!”  Gellert had moaned, the golden body sprawling, opening itself, under Albus’s initially ignorant fumbling.  Albus had inserted an oiled finger on Gellert’s orders, sure it had to hurt.  Didn’t it?  But Gellert had begged, or ordered, “More!” and Albus had finally obeyed. 

 

He had done more, and then more, at Gellert’s urging. 

 

Eventually it wasn’t oil on their fingers.  Or on their members.  Blood was the most powerful magical fluid, after all.  Especially willingly given.  Or forcibly taken.   Or both.

 

 

But Albus had renounced all such experiments, along with all his dreams of power. 

 

 

He’d repudiated that, all of it, all the shades and shapes of those twin seductions.  Albus knew his own weaknesses intimately; he’d learned his lesson with his sister’s death. 

 

Those triple seductions.

 

Albus knew exactly what to avoid.

 

Beautiful boys. The delusions of power. The Dark.

 

 

But Severus, poor boy, was ugly.  He should have been safe.

 

 

This… distraction… of Albus’s bade fair to derail the training that the boy demanded and deserved.

 

 

It was only that the boy’s begging for “more,” his face contorted in pain, had accidently echoed Albus’s earlier memories. 

 

If Albus hadn’t been reminded of Gellert’s demands, he wouldn’t have reacted in such an unseemly way.

 

That thought … echoed somehow.  

 

 

If Albus hadn’t been reminded of Gellert, if he hadn't had Gellert to remember, he wouldn’t have reacted.

 

 

As he wouldn’t have reacted to other, earlier, stimuli, and so had been compelled to forbid poor Apollyon his whips and chains.  The caretaker had been so angry at the loss of his privileges that he’d terminated his employment, and the governors had twittered agitatedly about how soft Hogwarts was becoming, but Albus had had to be adamant.

 

It was the headmaster’s duty to provide supervision of corporal punishment, and Albus had done so without incident for several years.

 

Until he’d watched Apollyon with the Malfoy boy. 

 

Lucius Malfoy had been the moon to young Gellert’s sun, but he was still lovely in his pale fashion.

 

And seeing all that blond beauty stretched out and twisting, listening to the boy gasping at each lash, watching that smooth white flesh torn and reddening, had been just—too  enticing.

 

Albus had wanted stop those gasps of protest with his mouth.  Had wanted to run his hands over the bloody marks, to let his hands move lower, to taste the mingled sweat and blood, to use it as Gellert had taught him….

 

 

He hadn’t, of course.  He’d never even entered the room of punishment.  He’d covered the headmaster’s mirror and left Apollyon to finish without supervision, contrary to regulations. 

While Albus had finished, on his own, a different punishment.  Or so it had felt.

 

No one knew, no one even dreamed, of Albus’s shameful weakness. 

 

But _he_ had dreamed, that night, of Gellert at first, and then the dream had twisted to include the lighter boy’s struggles. 

 

Later, Albus had caught himself wanting to catch Malfoy in mischief, to find an excuse to send him back to Apollyon….   

 

Well.  He had known then what he had to do.  There were powers that Albus could not be trusted with.

 

So he had banned corporal punishment altogether, and the dreams had faded. 

 

But there had apparently been some scarring.  Marks that couldn’t be erased.

 

But Severus, poor boy, was neither beautiful nor bright.  Dark, meager, pinched by his guilt and his fear:  he was the dark of the moon, if Malfoy had been  the full moon. 

 

Not even the palest reflection of Gellert’s sun, shining alone in splendor.

 

He had no radiance about him, no attraction.

 

So he should have been quite safe for Albus. 

 

Only he had begged in pain and passion for more, and so had awakened … echoes.

 

 

Albus twisted on his bed.

 

He should have been safe, doing this favor for Severus.

 

He should have been safe.

 

 

*

 

At that ill-fated job interview on the night of the Prophecy, Albus had first realized that Severus Snape was an Occlumens sufficiently skilled to lie undetected to a Legilimens.  

 

Albus had caught the boy out in a barefaced prevarication, but Severus’s eyes had not given him away—Aberforth’s previous information had.

 

What had happened afterwards had further established that Snape’s shields were, however, entirely insufficient to withstand Albus’s more determined probes.  

 

So that night on the desolate hillside, Albus had wrung the boy dry of information, expecting him to betray himself the next time he faced his master.

 

But the young man had surprised him, and survived to make a second report.  

 

And then a third.  

 

Clearly the boy’s nerve and Occlumency were both better than his performance before Albus had indicated.  

 

 

Then Severus came to Albus white and shaking, and mutely offered him a memory.

 

Albus decanted it into his Pensieve, and descended into Hell.

 

 

Silent forms, black-robed and masked, ringed the walls of an elaborately-appointed ballroom.  The light from the huge chandelier was reflected by what must have been dozens of gilded mirrors.  Albus didn’t recognize the room, but only a few families could have built and maintained such an extravagance.  He ran mentally through Pureblood names—the Lestranges, the Malfoys, the Smiths, perhaps the Patils—as he looked about the chamber and oriented himself.

 

At the center of this brilliance was Tom, the warmth of candlelight giving his waxen features a near normal hue.  He was pacing in a tight circle around three cowering forms, also robed and masked.  No one moved saved he, and his steps were soundless.

 

Finally Tom paused in his pacing and said, quite quietly, his eyes fixed on the three, “You are assembled to witness these three of your fellows pay the penalty for failure.”

 

There was the faintest rustle from the circled forms.  Tom continued, raising his voice slightly, “I had ordered that there be no survivors on last night’s raid.  This was intended to send a strong message to our enemies.  Yet my loyal servants somehow failed to execute my orders properly; one child was found, by the Aurors, still to be alive.” 

 

He raised his wand and said, still quite softly, “ _Crucio.”_   The three men convulsed and fell, screaming, one after the other.  Eventually, Tom lowered his wand and looked down lazily at the three twitching bodies, seeming not the least fatigued by performing so many Unforgivable Curses.   The renewed stillness was broken only by harsh gasps and one man’s choked-off whimpers. 

 

Tom said smoothly, circling again, “I hope you all now appreciate that no less than perfection may be tolerated.” 

 

He stopped suddenly.  “What’s this, then?”  Tom inserted a boot under the chin of one of the victims and turned the head a little more towards him. 

 

The man groaned and shut his eyes, shuddering, but Tom only smiled and said,  “ _Legilimens_!”

 

After a moment he stepped back, and his smile broadened.  “But this is touching!  It seems that the child who escaped—a mongrel, the diseased spawn of a bastard connection, mind you—was the same age as this one’s son, and he found his heart moved by the child’s plight.  So he stunned the boy, but told his fellows that he’d killed him.”

 

He spared a smile for the two men now inching away from the third.  “Mind, you two might have taken the pains to confirm the boy’s death, given my specific orders….”  The two figures froze, and Tom turned his attention back to the third.  Very slowly, very deliberately, Tom cut away the Death Eater mask, and it fell, to reveal a face Albus had seen pictured in the Prophet two days ago, next to a photo of the Dark Mark over a house.  Chang’s body and his son’s had been found; the wife (or her body) was still missing.

 

Chang stared up with mingled terror and defiance at his master.  He wet his lips, but then seemed to think better of speaking.

 

Tom lowered his voice to a sibilant whisper, but in the dead silence his words were perfectly audible.  “So.  Not a failure then, but deliberate disobedience.  You put the life of a misbegotten mongrel ahead of your sworn duty to your comrades and obedience to your master.  The penalty for incompetence, then, does not apply.  Justice demands that such betrayal receive a better, more fitting recompense.”

 

He waved his wand, and the sprawled man was jerked upright and bound to an iron post that had appeared directly beneath the chandelier, in full glare of the candles.  Tom nodded at the other two figures, and they hastily rose, bowed, and scuttled to join the watchers around the walls.

 

Tom slowly turned, surveying his circled followers.  “Wait here.  I shan’t be long.”  He pivoted on his heel and was gone with a crack of air, startlingly loud in the silent room.

 

None of the Death Eaters assembled so much as shifted his weight in Tom’s absence.  And indeed it was not long before Tom Apparated back.

 

With a small, struggling body in his arms. 

 

Chang cried out in horror and started fighting against his bonds, and Tom strolled over to the post to give him a better look. 

 

 _“Silencio!”_ he finally said, smiling at the struggling man.  “The thought of your son weakened you, Chang, led you to spare a mongrel’s life.  So it seems appropriate that the, shall we say, final cause of your betrayal, should suffer the penalty for it.”

 

 

Severus’s memory cut off, quite abruptly, about two minutes later.  Albus was glad.

 

 

 

Albus surfaced from the Pensieve.  He looked at the black shape now standing at his window.  Severus was clutching onto the sill as though it was his remaining hold on sanity. 

 

“How,” Albus coughed and stopped.  “How long?”

 

“Until the first death? “    The voice was entirely empty.

 

Albus coughed again.  “How long, Severus?”

 

The flat voice answered, “Three hours.  I think.  I’m not sure.” 

 

A pause, then, “I couldn—I couldn’t keep track.”

Another pause. 

 

The voice finally added, “Chang was happy to die at the end, I think.  The Dar—the Dark Lord was disappointed by that.”

 

Suddenly Severus whirled and confronted Albus, his face desperate.  “Headmaster, that will be _her_ if he ever sees what I have done!  I, I promised to do anything for you, to protect her, but if he ever realizes, knows that I have, he will, he will… I will have put her in worse danger!  We have to, we have to save her!”

 

*

 

First Severus had demanded the Unbreakable Vow of Albus.   “So if he ever truly suspects me, if he ever deeply questions me,   I will die before he sees why I might have turned, and he’ll have no cause to pursue her with worse intentions than he now has.”

 

Aberforth had obviously thought the worst of Albus when he heard the final clause that he was Bonding, but the boy’s evident satisfaction, Albus hoped, at least gave his distrustful brother a moment’s pause.

 

But then Severus had asked for more.

 

“Chang betrayed himself when he was being punished for what the Dark Lord thought originally had been mere incompetence.  I might well do the same.  I can hold my shields well enough under normal conditions, but how can I hope to do so if he tortures me?

 

Then he pressed, “And sir, you know that some of your orders…. might make it more likely that I be tortured.  So you _have_ to train me to resist.  Or I’ll betray her.”

 

Severus had raised eyes dilated in horror to Albus.  “Sir, you _have to_.”

 

Albus had stiffened, both at the content of the request and its temerity.   “My boy, you cannot ask another person to damage his soul by casting an Unforgivable Curse.  Whatever your reasons, however valid they may seem to you, you cannot ask that of another.” 

 

The boy had closed his eyes and whispered, “Please.  Headmaster.  You have to.”

 

Then he had opened his eyes and straightened, suddenly energized.  “But sir, no, you wouldn’t have to!  Not, not damage your soul, I mean.  Not—not do anything, really.  Not anything _wrong._   What I need to be able to do, is, is hold my mind shut against a master Legilimens while I’m being—distracted.  By pain, or shock, or whatever.  There’s nothing that says the _Legilimens_ has to be the one to cause the, the distraction.  I mean, if I hex _myself_ … or poison myself—there’s nothing wrong with you testing my barriers while I’m dealing with the pain I’ve caused _myself?_   Right?”

 

Albus had had finally to agree that, yes, that compromise would be ethically unexceptionable.

 

*

 

The boy pointed his wand at his body.  Lines of blood blossomed on his robes, and grew, and his breath came harshly.  His eyes, meeting Albus’s, were wild and defiant.

 

Albus had explicitly forbidden any spell that could do permanent harm.  Or draw blood.

 

But Albus couldn’t manage to slip in to administer his reproof nonverbally, and the black eyes flashed in triumph. 

 

Albus held those eyes, waiting, aware of the bright blood sliding inexorably down the boy’s thin body.   These must, then, be cuts that wouldn’t close of themselves.   Dark magic.

 

The boy’s head finally swayed, and Albus struck.

 

“ _Legilimens!”_

 

As the boy blacked out, Albus collected the memory he had been clinging to, to firm his resolve. 

 

Fiery hair softened by the leaf-cooled light, green eyes fixed on his— _“It’s real for us”_ _—_ the joy at seeing his own delight and certainty mirrored in her face—

 

That was the same memory that Severus had used to generate his Patronus, Albus remembered.   Had the boy really so little to sustain him?

 

He dismissed the thought, concerned more to hide his own reaction.  He was pleased that his wand did not tremble while he healed the boy and banished the blood, nor when he roused him.  Nor did his hand shake when he handed over the blood-replenishing potion.  He did not try to support Severus’s head while he drank it, though for another person in such a condition, under other circumstances, he might have.  But better not to touch this boy.  Given his responses to him.

 

Even after the dose took effect, the boy’s narrow ill-favored face and thin lips were still white. 

 

Lily-white.

 

Yet he whispered hoarsely, desperately, as soon as he could sit up, “Again.”

 

 

Albus’s dreams that night came as no surprise.

 

*

 

And the untoward reaction happened again as Albus watched the boy writhe beneath his wand.  And again.

 

Only their agreement that they were modeling Severus’s responses to his Dark Lord, whom he’d never dare repulse by attacking, had thus far preserved Albus from detection.  But eventually the boy might lash out unthinkingly and enter Albus’s mind in return.

 

And then he’d know.

 

This could not continue.  But the boy insisted, urgent and haunted, whenever Albus tried to demur.

 

Albus had seen the boy’s Boggart. 

 

And the boy’s Occlumency was improving, Albus couldn’t deny that.  The training was working. 

 

It must continue.

 

So Albus continued to dream, and to have to cleanse himself on waking. 

 

With Gellert’s wand, oh god. 

 

Again and again.

 

*

 

_Severus gives him that wild, desperate look, then throws back his head and downs the potion in a single swallow.  Albus stares at the long exposed throat, at the pale column framed by dark hair, unable to look away._

_The body convulses, and Albus readies himself.  But it convulses again, and re-forms._

_Not poison this time.  Polyjuice._

_Gellert stands before him, smiling, alight, and whispers, “ **Now** will you give me more, Albus?”  _

_He steps forward, golden and compelling._

 

And Albus woke.

 

If he didn’t have those memories of Gellert…. there was nothing about the boy himself that was attractive.  It was only that he kept inadvertently reminding Albus of that other, beautiful, one.

 

If Albus didn’t have those golden memories, he would be safe.

 

He stared at the wand in his hands, at the detestable stickiness on his body.  With a slow pass, he cleaned his body.  Would that he could so easily cleanse his mind.

 

But perhaps he could.

 

What purpose did it serve, to remember his explorations of Gellert’s lithe blond body?  Recalling them, revisiting them, was merely his dirty little pleasure.  

 

And even a lifetime later, the memories’ effect on Albus was still utterly reprehensible.

 

He could lose them.

 

The thought of losing them, of losing the remembrance of Gellert’s young glory, made Albus’s breath come short. 

 

But losing his ultimate image of beauty would, after all, be a suitable punishment. 

 

And if he lost it, then he’d never be troubled by such unwholesome reactions again.

 

Or indeed, Albus could go yet further. 

 

What use had he for such responses?  He was alone, by his own firm choice.  Not for him, the alchemical marriage, nor any other. 

 

He could stop such reactions.  Entirely.

 

True, the spell for impotence was formally classed as a dark curse.  But it was only classified as such because most men, whether wizards or Muggles, were bitterly perturbed at the merest thought of the loss of their virility. 

 

And of course the spell was normally cast on an unconsenting victim.  But Albus knew that there had been monks who’d cast it on _themselves,_ grateful to be delivered from the flesh’s distraction.

 

As he would.

 

It could be considered a sacrifice, in effect.  One that most men, most wizards, would have been unable, unwilling, to make. 

 

Why, Merlin himself had lacked such steadiness of purpose.  And Merlin had come to a shameful end through that very weakness…. 

 

Albus had it in him to outdo Merlin, in this regard at least.

 

Albus’s wand (Gellert’s wand) was steady as Albus pointed it at his member and incanted. 

 

The relief that rushed through him made him feel how right it had been to purge himself of those base responses.

 

But to erase his memories as well—to remove Gellert’s golden, blood-streaked body from his mind… that was cruelly hard, still, to contemplate.

 

And not just Gellert’s glory.  All, all the shameful memories that troubled him so, he must remove.  Make himself clean. 

 

Albus hardened himself.  The boy needed the training.  He required it.   Albus owed it to him, really.

 

And Albus couldn’t continue this training, not with such thoughts in his head.

 

It was another sacrifice, really.  For him, even a harder one.  And therefore of greater worth.

 

Slowly, Albus lifted his wand again and gathered his thoughts.

_“Obliviate.”_

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Albus is disappointed by his followers.

_“… the light_

_Gives perfect vision, false and hard…”_

 

*

Albus was gravely disappointed to discover that all of the Marauders were hiding things from him.  

He had expected better of them all, but particularly of James, to whom he’d shown such favor.  But putting together some of Severus’s information with the previous indications pointing towards a security breach within the Order itself, it had become clear that one of the Marauders must be either a gull or a traitor.  And when, on his next briefing of them, he had looked each in the eye, subtle pressure established that each had erected a barrier.  He didn’t push hard enough to alert them that his probe was not the simple confirmation of comprehension and commonality that was naturally, almost unconsciously, sought by a Legilimens in intense discussion. 

Nor was he fool enough to tell his suspects that he was searching for a traitor.

But the evidence was incontrovertible:  they were all Occluding.  Against him.  Not all of the four need actually be traitorous, but all four were, at the least, keeping secrets from their avowed leader, and determined to continue to do so.

This evidence made him more certain than ever that Severus, overwrought boy that he was, had been wrong in thinking the Potters Tom’s primary target.  His obsession with Lily Potter—one could scarcely dignify such a fixation by a kinder term—led him to exaggerate the danger to her and downplay the more real threat faced by others.  

 

A good thing, in its way.  Young Severus would never have agreed to spend so many hours in advanced Occlumency training merely to protect Alice Longbottom.

 

And Severus’s training, whatever his motivation for undertaking it, was proving useful.  Certainly no one else had ever managed to report back from Death Eater meetings.

Still less, repeatedly. 

However, Severus’s conviction of the Potters’ unique peril need not make Albus believe the same.  Realistically, the Potters’ baby was unlikely to be the new Arthur.  Uther and Ygraine had been king and duchess, both born to rule.  It was Merlin, Arthur’s mentor and guide, who had been the mixed-blood but powerful outsider. 

James Potter’s blood was well enough, if not quite the highest, but he had married wildly beneath him.  Longbottom and his wife, on the other hand, were old-blood Purebloods on both sides.  That would weigh with Tom and his followers.

More importantly, the Prophecy would surely never have come to Albus were he not fated to help fulfill it.  Albus must be destined to play Merlin’s role in the prophesied child’s rearing and training. 

Frank and Alice had accepted Albus’s offer to stand as Neville’s godfather with becoming gratitude; James had not even noticed Albus’s hints, and had chosen his friend Sirius instead for that signal honor. 

 

Which was in line with James and Sirius’s worst failing as members of the Order:  they were self-willed.  Give them an objective to accomplish, and it was usually done, by one means or another (and sometimes better not to ask their means).  Give them direct orders… and they’d as often as not diverge from them, pleading an opportunity not to be missed.  An opportunity to do something they, in their great wisdom, considered more vital than fulfilling their leader’s carefully-crafted plans.

Albus had finally started sending them out as a solitary pair, and not constructing any plans contingent on their obeying him to the letter. 

 

And now this, the discovery that James was, perhaps had always been, conspiring with his three friends to conceal information from his sworn leader….

 

No, Albus couldn’t imagine James being more amenable to letting Albus determine his heir’s upbringing, than he was now to letting Albus determine his immediate course of action. 

It was Frank who would allow Albus to provide the guidance the prophesied one would require to be ready for his destiny.

Severus’s fears were simply colored by his own preoccupation.  Tom might target the Potters to be complete, but the child of prophecy would turn out to be Neville Longbottom.

 

Albus was now sure of it. 

He sent Alice another little note, inquiring genially about his godson.

 

*

Severus was turning out a bit of a disappointment as well.   Each time that Albus broke through his defenses (and it was increasingly hard to do), he found nothing there but the girl and her peril.

 

Really, she was pretty enough, and talented, but commonplace.  Not worth such drama.

 

Albus would have hoped that the boy might by now have started caring for the larger issues, not just the danger to that one person, but Severus seemed incapable of maturing, of expanding his concerns to embrace wizardkind as a whole.  It was perhaps unreasonable to expect the boy to demonstrate the same capacity for unselfish love for all humanity as Albus had eventually perfected, but Albus would have expected _some_ progress.

But no.  His precious Lily—not even his!—continued Severus’s sole concern.  Really, the young man was entirely selfish even in his limited virtues.  And he knew it, too; the boy felt searing shame each time Albus uncovered one of his little fantasies about the grateful friend or the grieving widow. 

 

Albus’s own favorite fantasy was the one he’d extracted, piece by pathetic piece.  It started with Severus risking his life to save _James_ from being killed by his own daredevilry, and restoring her husband to a grateful but boggled Lily.  James’s humiliated rage, Lily’s remorse at having previously misjudged her old friend, had been lovingly dwelt on.  Afterwards, naturally, James’s continued careless arrogance had not only gotten himself killed but almost killed his wife and child.  Severus’s heroic intervention had barely managed to save the other two, and Lily flung herself on her preserver in gratitude, only to be gently put off.  The nobility of his oration!  And then, naturally, the widow fell in love with her rescuer’s greatness of soul as well as his courage and resourcefulness…. 

Albus returned to that fantasy every chance he got, but it grew harder and harder to find.  As did the others.  Even the fantasies of Lily weeping over an unmarked grave were being buried deeper and deeper.  Severus had managed to develop a technique for seeming to let Albus in, while masking his deepest thoughts.

But Albus knew that those fantasies were still there, and Severus knew that he knew.

Albus had memorized Severus’s first version of Lily’s imagined speech calling Severus a better man than her husband.  He would quote from it, followed by lavish praise for the fertility of Severus’s invention.  The boy would turn mute and crimson with mortification every time.

 

Still, such enduring self-centeredness was disappointing.  Albus had hoped for better.

 

Recently too the boy had also started reiterating his initial selfish demand that _Albus_ hex him.  Severus pointed out, reasonably enough, that the Dark Lord might well take him by surprise, and that he needed to be sure he could withstand a sudden assault on his physical senses, not only a prolonged one.

The boy’s argument did make some sense. 

Of course, for an attack to provide a true test, it must come as a complete surprise.  So Albus would have to deny the boy, right up until he did it.

Albus had started contemplating idly which hexes might provide the best test of the boy’s defenses.  Various sequences had presented themselves to his mind.

 

But at the moment, Albus had a more immediate issue to address—the boy’s newest list of confirmed supporters, and the Auror Department’s response to the last name on the list.

*

Moody actually growled aloud when he read the last name.  Then he looked up at Albus, his face grim.  “How sure are you of this one?”

“Entirely, Alastor.”

“But how can you be cer—Dumbledore.  By Merlin, you’ve managed to slip an informer into his organization.  How?  No Auror we’ve tried has ever survived his first interview, and no undercover agent, however good his Occlumency, has lasted more than a few weeks.  And no one we’ve tried to turn—we can break them, sometimes, but then they beg to be killed to escape his wrath.  How did you manage it?”

Albus sipped his tea placidly, neither confirming nor denying.

Alastor continued to stare at him.  He muttered, “That has to be it…”

He looked down again at the names.  His eyes stopped again at the last one, and his face contorted in a snarl.  “Well.  I was wrong, it seems, in thinking that the Aurors hadn’t succeeded in insinuating one of our own in amongst the Death Eaters.  I just hadn’t realized that the spying was turned in this direction—” 

He stopped suddenly.  “Unless—unless he’s reporting directly to Crouch. I may be the leader of the Death Eater Defensive Force, but it wouldn’t be unlike Crouch to run a agent unknown even to me.”

Albus sipped again and smiled.  “I suggest you ask him, Alastor.  Quite privately, of course.”

“And if he’s not…,”  Alastor’s face clenched shut again.  “If he’s not, well, accidents frequently happen in the field.”

Albus put his tea down.  “To be sure they do.  However, Alastor, you and Bartemius should first consider another issue.  An unknown—and especially, an unguessed—traitor, poses an incomparable danger to an organization.  Yet that same traitor, identified, is to some extent de-fanged.  The harm that he can do may be limited.  While the help he might provide—inadvertently, of course—may be substantial.  You two should consider the possibility of letting this traitor run loose, with, to be sure, some limits on the information he has access to.  And use him to feed, shall we say, information of dubious validity to Lord Voldemort.”

Alastor looked down at the parchment for a moment, processing the suggestion, and then looked back up at Albus with the sudden grin that made him look like a battered and  disreputable tomcat.  One that had earned every scar, and enjoyed each and every battle.  Grinning, Alastor pulled his wand and burned the list. 

“We’ll take that under advisement, Headmaster.  But the accident eventually, I think.  Any other issues to sort before I go?”

“No, no, that’s all I had for the Aurors at this time, Alastor.”

“Then I’ll leave as quietly as I came.”  Still grinning, he pulled a cloak from a pocket and slung it about him.

 

And disappeared from the shoulders down.

 

Completely.

 

That was …  odd.  Albus frowned.  He said, “Alastor, put up your hood, would you?”

Alastor raised his brows, but complied. 

And he was not there.  Not to Albus’s sight, of course, but also not to his magic. 

 

Albus thought fast.  Coming up, Alastor had doffed his invisibility cloak on the stairwell.  And indeed, Albus had never previously seen Alastor actually under it.   “Alastor, I’d like to examine your invisibility cloak.  Would you mind leaving Disillusioned instead?  I imagine I can send it back to you tomorrow.”

Alastor stared.  “What are you looking for, Albus?  It’s a perfectly normal mid-level cloak from Borgin & Burke’s.  Demiguise hair, no extra enchantments.  Cost me a sweet Sickel, but it’s not exactly top of the line.  What have you spotted?”

“I’m not quite sure,” Albus answered.  “An anomaly, but I’m not entirely sure what.  Might I borrow it for the night?”

Alastor snorted.  “Well, I hardly need a cloak to remain invisible to your students.  So yes.  But I’ve a surveillance assignment on Thursday; I’ll want it back by then.  I don’t fancy spending twelve hours renewing the damned Disillusionment Charm.”

Albus assured him that he’d have it back, his hands greedy for the cloak.

 

Which was, indeed, entirely ordinary, it appeared. 

Albus spent quite some time examining the cloak by eye, hand, and wand.  Because it had hidden Alastor from Albus.

 

Which was impossible.

 

Such cloaks were transparent to him.  Well, no, not transparent precisely; he didn’t exactly _see_ the person underneath it.  But he was always fully aware of both the presence and the identity of the cloaked form.

 

Or at least… this was true of the ones sported by students.  Maybe this one of Alastor’s was simply a better grade?

 

So Albus travelled Polyjuiced to Knockturn, and bought the cheapest second-hand cloak he could find. 

 

Only, he couldn’t see through it, except in the worn patches where anyone might. 

 

Which was absurd, unthinkable.

 

Such paltry shifts as invisibility cloaks shouldn’t be proof against his magic.  They should be utterly permeable to him.

 

They _were_ permeable to him.  He had the proof.

 

Or, at least, the proof that one such cloak had been.

Now that he came to consider the question stringently, had any student been so privileged as to flaunt an invisibility cloak under his nose, save one?

 

Upon reflection, Albus had had to concede, no, none.  Save one.

 

Hogwarts students weren’t generally given such gifts, even by the most doting of parents.   And no student could afford one for himself.  Even that used cloak, wearing out in patches as it was, had cost nearly as much as a top of the line broom.  Only a student in Sirius Black’s position his last year, undisputed master of a small fortune with no one to account to for how he spent it, could conceivably have bought himself an invisibility cloak.  No allowance, however generous, would run to such an extravagance. 

And few parents—almost none—would indulge their children with such a gift.

And of course, the Potters need not have bought the cloak new for their son.  It was quite probably an heirloom.  An heirloom which, however, had never worn out, as such enchanted objects normally did, given time.

 

The Potters had been a very old family indeed.

 

And there might be a reason why one specific cloak, the youngest brother’s Cloak, might be permeable to the Master of the oldest brother’s Wand when others weren’t.

 

But if there were a chance, any chance at all, that James Potter’s invisibility cloak had been inherited from the Peverells… well, that changed everything.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Albus must be the only person in all the world to associate sunlight and salt-scented wind with thoughts of Inferi.

_I am the past, and that is all._

  

*

 

“Bah,” Gellert had said, looking at the luxuriant hedgerows, the summer-gilt lane leading up from Godric’s Hollow.  He slashed pettishly at some Queen Anne’s lace.  “This country is too small, Albus.  Too domesticated.  Too… pretty.  I want mountains or sea, something large, something a wizard may measure himself against.”  He looked at Albus measuringly.  “I feel sure that you, my friend, share my feelings enough to have sometime sought and found a place where one might breathe and talk more freely.  Some place that partakes more of the sublime.  Take us there.” 

 

Aberforth had jeered at the homemade deerskin tunic Gellert was wearing that day (“What’s he think he is?  An ancient Gaul?”)  But the tunic showed Gellert’s legs, as modern robes did not, and Albus had no objections to that.

 

On his mettle, Albus had Apparated Gellert to a cliff top, an Orkney cove.  A potions correspondent had once brought Albus here to gather a rare saxifrage, but he didn’t tell Gellert that.

 

So Albus remembered the ensuing conversation against the backdrop of a red-banded cliff, with a fresh wind blowing in their faces and the light glittering on the sea battering away hundreds of feet below them.

 

Gellert paced back and forth, delighting in the exertion and the view, exhorting Albus, “See, one needs to clear one’s mind as well as one’s lungs.  To start from basic principles, not resting on stale traditions and superstitions.”

 

Albus nodded.  The need to throw out the tired conclusions long accepted by trammeled minds had been much in their conversations of late. 

 

Gellert prowled along the cliff top, golden in the sun.  Albus felt lanky, too tall and too unmuscled, next to that lithe form.  But, Gellert had told him, to the meeting of true minds there could be no impediment.  Gellert, like Albus, had never before met any mind remotely capable of meeting his own.  Next to that, what did the accident of physical form matter?

 

So Gellert embarked on one of his Teutonic perorations, and Albus tried to gather his mind to meet it.   Gellert turned on Albus, glowing, to ask, “So, my friend, what is the primary, the foundational, ethical difficulty of statesmanship?  What is the foremost issue faced by statesmen who would found a new order based on justice and first principles?”

 

Albus hesitated.  He offered, “Tradition?”

 

Gellert laughed.  “No, no, my friend, much simpler than that!  What is it, who is it, that leans on tradition and superstition rather than thinking for themselves?  Who, in all too many cases, cannot be trusted to think for themselves?  Are simply incapable?”

 

Albus blushed and ventured, “Um… people who—“

 

Gellert broke in delightedly.  “Precisely, my friend.  People!  People who are too stupid to understand a new idea.  Or too caught up in their own concerns to entertain that new idea.  Or too cowardly or too self-absorbed, to accept a new idea if it contravenes their selfish short-sightedness….

 

“The fundamental problem of the state, my friend, is that there will always be those who don’t _desire_ the greater good.  Whether because of their cowardice, or their selfishness, or their stupidity. ‘

 

He sighed.  “Would that it were not so.   But it is.   Were it not so, there might be no need for the state.  All humans would act always in harmony, striving for the highest goal.  But there will always be those who are small-minded and selfish and cowardly.  Or even, merely, ignorant and bound by convention and tradition.  And so there will always be the need for the state, for institutions to make individuals act to bring about the greater good, not their minute, selfish, perhaps even misapprehended, immediate goals.

 

“And so the state must continually contend against those who don’t desire justice.  Against those can’t, or who won’t, accept the greater good. “

 

Gellert paused in his pacing and took Albus’s face between his two palms.  He breathed, “Follow me here, Albus.  Listen.”

 

Albus listened, mesmerized.  The sea was not deeper nor more blue than Gellert’s eyes.

 

“And so, and so, the state must inevitably be corrupted.  By necessity.  Because it must contend against those who refuse to accept justice.  The only way to bring a committed criminal to justice is by force, surely this is obvious!  They’re not going to, what’s the English phrase, turn themselves in!  But so the state must send out force.  To combat criminals.  To bring them, those deliberate criminals, to justice.

 

“But in doing so, the state condemns itself to practicing injustice.  Because—follow me here, Albus—when the leader descends to using force, he can’t ensure it falls only on the deserving. 

 

“It is justice, surely, that someone who lives by the sword should die by the sword, as your poet said.

 

“But that’s not what happens.  Or at least, it’s not all that the ruler must consent to happening.  Rather, the ruler must send out those who are blameless—those who support him, who support the rule of law—to engage their own lives to catch the criminals!  Those who support law _the most_ must risk their lives to catch the lawless.

 

“So a leader, any leader, must consent to risk the deserving, the loyal, his own most devoted followers.   In order to stop those others.  His bitterest enemies.

 

And this, this, Albus, is the terrible paradox at the foundation of the state. Inescapable by any leader.  Because it is justifiable to use force against enemies, no?  To use violence against those who would use violence to oppose law.  There’s no way else to stop them!  There’s nothing else they understand.

 

“And if the enemies of the state were the only ones hurt, this would be acceptable, if unfortunate.  But it is not only they who bleed, who hurt, who die.  It’s also the just.”

 

Gellert released Albus and sprang away again, pacing in the sunlight. 

 

“Consider Alexander the Great, my friend!  He himself took fire with the idea of spreading the glories of Greek civilization from his teacher, the great philosopher.  But he knew too that he was exceptional, that lesser men would not be kindled by mere reason.  So he did not recruit an army of philosophers to persuade the barbarians to adopt civilization; he led an army of soldiers.

 

“So too we must, when we go forth to bring the glories of magic to all humanity!  When we lead wizards from skulking in the shadows to take our rightful place as the leaders of history, we will find some, yes, some, who will be persuaded by logic or visions of glory.  But many even of us, and certainly most of the Muggles, will be too ignorant, too ruled by fears and tradition, to embrace our logic immediately.  

 

“And so, like Alexander of old, we must first recruit an army.

 

“But then, even as Alexander did, we must fall prey to the same cruel logic.  You remember his Indian campaign, how he lost half or more of his men.  As with him, it will be our most fervent followers, those most on fire with the vision we give them, who will risk the most for the new order we are bringing into being.  So it is the most worthy who will risk the most.  And who will die first, or be injured irremediably in our service.  The service of history.

 

“While on the other side, among those who resist history, it is the least worthy, those who resist hardest, who will die most surely.  Those who acquiesce, who give in to our logic, shall be spared.

 

“There is the problem, my friend, in its ugly essence:  while it is only justice, only logic, that those who will not submit to logic must be persuaded by other means, it is unjust that it should be the very best of our own followers, those most persuaded of our cause, who should face the greatest travail.  And who must be sacrificed to bring about the future, that bright future that they loved more than their own lives.

 

“And yet so it must be:  sacrificing their best, their most loyal, is what every leader in history has had to consent to.

 

“Until now.”  Gellert stood suddenly quite still upon the cliff top.  The wind whipped his hair so his sea-blue eyes were invisible, but Albus could feel the intensity of his gaze.  The cliff visible behind Gellert was banded in all the colors of drying blood, and the grass Gellert stood on was withered and dun, but Gellert in his tunic was like a statue of molten gold, light pouring all around him.

 

He whispered, and the sea-wind was loud, but Albus heard as though Gellert’s voice were entering straight into his mind.  “I have a plan that might limit the pain and suffering to those who invite it by their resistance to right reasoning.  If it works, we need not spend our most loyal and worthy supporters as soldiers or as, as Polizisten, as what do you call them, Aurors.

 

“I believe that it may be possible to raise an army from among those who cannot be hurt, cannot be killed.  You remember the legend of the golem—well, there really are men of clay.  And they can be animated, at need, and by logic.

 

“This quest is what I came to your little country for, my friend.  Following that hope.  The fact that, all unexpected, I first find you, my first true friend, the first person ever able to appreciate, to follow my reasoning—why, that tells me that History herself smiles munificently on my quest.” 

 

Through the dazzle of sunlight Albus could see Gellert throw back his head and give that exuberant Teutonic laugh.  Albus smiled back more hesitantly. 

 

Gellert sobered and came to him, pressing his arm.  “My friend.  My true friend.  In legends, in stories told to amuse the little children, we finally find the answer to our need.  For the need of the leader of a state to be founded, finally, on justice.  The answer no great leader has ever found before, neither Julius nor Alexander.  But they never thought to ask exactly the right question.  We do, and so we can see the answer they never thought to look for.

 

“It is unjust that the most loyal and most brave among one's followers be the ones to die to bring about justice.   Yes?”  Sea-deep eyes held Albus’s, and Albus nodded a mute assent.

 

“And now they need not.  If instead we animate the men of clay, to do what must be done.”

 

Albus’s mind scrambled through the Kabbalah sources he’d read.  “But—”

 

Men of clay?  The sources all agreed that it hadn’t worked.  The MaHaRal had finally failed, though such sources as Albus had read were ultimately unclear—actually, agreed only in their utter, disarrayed  disagreement—as to why the Rabbi of Prague had failed.

 

He met Gellert’s clear blue eyes.  Gellert whispered, “Because he took the instructions too literally, Albus.  The MaHaRal formed men of mud, of clay, and tried to animate them.  Tried to animate his own makings, in the semblance of that first inspiration.  Tried to make dead dust to breathe.  So of course his own hubris caught him up, and he failed.

 

“But you know, and I know, that there have long, _long,_ existed, and have long been used, spells to animate existing men of clay.”  Gellert paused and fixed Albus with his gaze. 

 

He said more slowly, “When you once remember that clay is what all men are made of, and to which we return, all of us, upon our deaths.”     

 

Albus’s breath caught in horror as he realized the reference.  “Inferi..?” 

 

“Bah!”  Geller spat, gripping Albus’s shoulders fiercely.  “We agreed, did we not, that we would proceed from first principles?  Calling an ugly name reflects superstition, not science.  I thought better of your mind, of your ability to banish superstitious thought.  I tell you these things are better named golems than Inferi.  Things of clay.”

 

He shook Albus lightly.  “I experimented with animals!  I, who talk to you, Albus!  I saw the objections one might make, and I set out, I took it upon my soul, to see if those concerns were valid!  By my own tests, not trusting to any other source! 

 

“With animals I tested these questions.  There can be no objection to that!  I performed the tests.  And so I can tell you, my friend, the truth. 

 

“I can give you answers.  None other.  Because it is only I who had the boldness to make the necessary tests. ”

 

His thumbs dug into Albus’s shoulders; Albus finally gave a weak nod.

 

“This much of what the books say is accurate:  any wizard may animate dead clay, but not control it.  Only those bodies killed by the wizard will answer to him; the others will attack him.  I have tested this completely, as I said, on animals.  Only with animals, you see!  And I tested, too, whether any of the dead bodies responded to the Cruciatus or the Imperius or the Killing Curse.  And they did not.  There is neither will nor sensation nor life, you see; no evil can be done to them.  Clay.  That is all there is to them.  There is nothing there to harm.

 

“And so I tested further on a Muggle’s body.  I had to determine if the human spirit made a difference.  Well, it might, but the human shape does not!  For that test was I expelled.”

 

Gellert’s face contorted darkly and he shouted, “But explain to me what harm was done to anyone!  The clay had no sensation or will; no harm _could_ be done to that man, he was past harm.  I had verified that first with animals!  The only harm that might have been done to anyone was, perhaps, emotional disturbance to his family.  But they could only feel that if they knew of my experiments, and I took care that they should not know.  So no one was harmed physically, and no one suffered distress; the only outrage was to a taboo.  For this, as I say, I was expelled.  I ask you, Albus, is that justice?  To harm me, when I’d harmed no one?”

 

Albus shook his head weakly, not trusting his voice.  Gellert stared at him.

 

“Even you, my friend?  Even you rush to condemn me, for no reason other than superstition?  We had agreed that we would proceed from first principles, did we not?  So.  How can a spell which self-evidently is capable of harming no-one be noxious?  All it did was to animate clay!  Can a spell which harms no-one, which is incapable, by definition, of causing hurt to any living being, any sentient being, be intrinsically evil, Albus?  Answer me!”

 

Albus wet his lips.  “It… a spell which can harm no sentient being… can’t logically be said to be evil.  Only… unsanctioned.”

 

Gellert’s smile was dazzling.  “Unsanctioned, yes.  Unhallowed.  But we have already agreed that if we let ourselves be fettered by tradition, we should proceed no further than the milling herd does.  Progress demands logic and boldness, not blind obedience to our fellows’ superstitions.”

 

He slung his arm around Albus and made Albus walk with him as he paced.

 

“So.  By first principles, then, if there were a way to control such golems, that would be the moral solution to the leader of an army.  He could lead an army of the dead, who could be destroyed or damaged, but never killed nor made to suffer.  And then he need make no loyal supporter suffer or die for their loyalty; only those who bring their fate upon themselves by resisting him need ever be harmed.

 

“If it were possible to control these golems.  Only, as I told you, I tested with animals, and the books were right in saying that one can only control what one makes oneself.  Obviously, one might animate felled enemies.  But the moral problem with that would be the temptation, surely overwhelming if one were beleaguered, to kill unnecessarily.  To use force that is not needed is both immoral and impolitic, as you so wisely pointed out. Yet a harried commander, wanting to spare his own men, could fall all too readily into such temptation, yes?

 

“But _that_ is what I came to England for, my friend.  To pretty little Godric’s Hollow.  For I knew that here lay the graves of the Peverell brothers, and that it is said that they were the three brothers of Beedle’s tale.  And if you look closely at the second brother, you see that that is what his Stone did:  summon and command the dead.  The brother’s problem was that, as was obvious in the tale, his lover was still dead.  Cold clay.  The tale used the very word, cold!  He didn’t want to command her; he wanted her to respond to him as a living woman.  But the golems do not respond.  They do not feel.  I have tested this. 

 

“But for a leader, as opposed to a lover, this is what we want.  Obedience without sensation, without the possibility of suffering hurt or death.  So we, as leaders, need not suffer the guilt of sending our devoted followers to suffer and die in our battles.

 

“So that for the first time in human history, the state need not be founded on the acceptance of injustice, of the necessity of visiting violence upon the just and loyal.

 

“If we can but find the stone and use it.”

 

Albus had nodded, dazzled by the light in Gellert’s eyes.   The conversation had veered off then into schemes for finding and identifying the Stone; they talked and walked along the cliff until hunger drove them home late in the day.

 

 

*

 

And so for Albus, thoughts of Inferi brought up memories of warm sun and the dazzle of the sea.

 

That the man who called himself “Lord Voldemort” had acquired a ring containing what was possibly the Resurrection Stone, Albus had long known from eyewitness account.

 

That he’d repeated Gellert’s discovery was only inference, but it was an inference well-supported.  Recently there had arisen rumors that You-Know-Who had not one Inferius, or two, but an army. 

 

Tom Riddle knew what he had, and he knew how to use it.  Let the Cloak fall into his hands, and there would remain nothing but for him to come for the Wand.

 

And then the wrong man would be the Master of Death, and all those yet living would fall under his dominion. 

 

Tom Riddle had taken the Stone from his vanquished enemy.  He must plan to take the Cloak in the same manner. 

 

But why would he ever have realized that the Potter heir might have it?  How could he have learned what Albus had not?

 

And how best could he be stopped? 

 


	4. Chapter 4

_“In light, and nothing else, awake.”_

_“That’s the way, brother;_

_One day I will leave you there_

_as I have left you there before,_

_working for death.”_

_Judy Grahn, “A Woman is Talking to Death”_

 

  

Albus could have torn out his hair, were he given to such demonstrations.  The answer had been in the Hogwarts genealogical collections all this time. 

 

But of course Albus had never looked.  He’d forsworn that particular ambition by the time he’d returned to Hogwarts.

 

But a young orphan, years ago, yet long after a chastened Albus had joined the Hogwarts staff, had pored feverishly through the Hogwarts records, searching for his surely-illustrious forebears.

 

And had found something besides the Gaunts.

 

The youngest daughter of Henricus Peverell had married Gerard Figulus in 1368.

 

Oh, James Potter’s son was even named after his Peverell ancestor!

 

Severus Snape had been right all along that his master’s eyes were fixed on the Potter boy.  Of course Tom would consider the rightful heir to Death’s Cloak the larger threat.  He must plan to eliminate the prophesied threat and take the Cloak in the same act, making himself Master of two of the Hallows.

 

For the Cloak to fall into Tom’s possession would be a disaster.  It must not be allowed to occur. 

 

And that young fool of a Potter was undoubtedly wearing it whenever he performed his feats of derring-do!  Putting it in more danger!

 

Though, of course—did James actually realize what he was risking?  Would even such a care-for-nothing risk so much? 

 

Moreover, with all James’s rufflings of superiority at Hogwarts, Albus had never noticed a hint of James preening himself on owning something so unique.  Could James have possessed Death’s very Cloak, and known it, and not flaunted the fact?  It flew against his normal character; James had never been one, as the saying went, to hide his light under a bushel.

 

The Potters might not have passed down the knowledge of the Cloak’s true provenance along with the artifact itself—James might not know, even now, what he had.  That could be tested.

 

And James was not the only one of which this might have been true.

 

Tom might not have known what he had.  At first.  No one might have known. 

 

A memory inserted itself sharply into the forefront of Albus’s brain—himself in the Great Hall, his attention drawn unwillingly to the handsome young Head Boy, he knew not why.  And again.  And again.

 

His attention drawn to a boy wearing a certain ring. 

 

After he had defeated Gellert and started carrying the Elder Wand.

 

Marvolo had claimed, Morfin had believed, that the symbol was the Peverell coat of arms.  Albus had always known what the symbol meant, and he’d assumed Tom Riddle had known, as well.  But he’d assumed that an early Gaunt had been a Quester, not the holder unknowing of the Stone itself!

 

But Tom… what if Tom had taken his uncle’s assurances along with the ring, but later put together some clues:  a supposed Peverell inheritance, the Hallows symbol, and the fact that the stone in that gold ring was no precious gem to earn such a setting….?

 

Why set a plain stone in a precious setting?  Why engrave it with that symbol?

 

Albus had been blind, blind, blind!  A boy had flaunted one of the Hallows under his very nose, and Albus had never seen it!

 

Two boys.

 

What a fool he had been.

 

Well, one of the boys, at least, he might perhaps do something about now.

 

Albus thought for a time, then cast a pinch of Floo-powder in his fire and watched the flames turn green.  “James?  I am engaged in a study of some old family heirlooms, studying how some retain their magic while others fade.  I am becoming convinced that Old Magic might be key to defeating Lord Voldemort.  Might I borrow your family’s invisibility cloak and examine it?”

 

James blinked at him.  “My … invisibility cloak, Professor Dumbledore?”

 

Albus smiled at him.  “The one you and Sirius used at Hogwarts, to sneak out after hours. To pilfer food and such-like.  That cloak is an heirloom, is it not?”

 

James had gone slightly red.  “I suppose so, yeah.” 

 

“And yet it has lost none of its potency with time, unlike most commercially available cloaks?”

 

“Er, no.” 

 

“Might I borrow it then, to study it?  A few days should suffice to apprise me of its properties.”

 

James frowned and shrugged.  “All right, I guess.”

 

He didn’t know, then.  Albus smiled again.  “I’ll come through now then, if that’s convenient, James.  I wish to begin my researches at once.”

 

*

 

But the Cloak revealed nothing to Albus’s examination, save that he was indeed aware of its presence whenever (and only whenever) he carried the Wand.

 

Albus started wearing the Cloak in his quarters, trying to see if it had any effect.  But of course he did not turn invisible to himself.  Nor did he note any other reactions.  Still, the experiment seemed worth continuing.  Uniting two of the Hallows should have some effect, surely?

 

Wearing it outside his quarters—it acted like a normal (and normally effective) invisibility cloak. 

 

He even asked Filius for a test duel—and Filius’s hexes landed through the cloak.

 

James turned querulous after the second week, but Albus managed to put him off.  “Do you know, James, that your grandfather owned that very cloak?  It’s the oldest one I’ve found whose enchantments have not faded, and I still haven’t unlocked exactly how.  I truly think, James, that I am on the track of something that will enable us to defeat the enemy.”

 

He owled privately to Lily, “I hope, as well, to keep your husband from running headlong into danger as is his wont.  Try to reconcile him to its absence, and to his concomitant forced abstinence from foolhardy escapades.” 

 

*

 

It felt strangely illicit to read by wand-light rather than candlelight, reminiscent of that period long ago when Albus had feverishly devoured Gellert’s midnight letters under his covers.   (Pointlessly, as there was no mother to storm into his bedroom, extinguish his candle with a wave, and scold about boys needing their rest, but reading in his narrow childhood bed had brought back old instincts of secrecy.)

 

 But now, Albus loved how the bluish wandlight illumined the creamy old pages. 

 

Moreover, candles, however golden and lovely their flames, flickered.  The light they cast ever rose and sank, unstable, responding to any passing draught. 

 

There was a parable in that, surely.

 

The cool light cast by his wand was steadier.  Reliable. 

 

Albus had taken to doing all his solace reading—Muggle classics, mostly—by wandlight.  The irony of reading Muggle texts by magic pleased him further.  And he’d taken to wearing the Cloak while doing so, as though this were indeed an illicit pleasure.

 

So indeed it might have been taken to be, by those who thought that Albus’s every waking thought should have been bent on the war.  But Albus understood better.  One must keep one’s mind ever refreshed with images of what’s worth fighting for, lest fighting Tom and his Death Eaters turn one into their equal, as Bartemius and his followers, even Alastor, seemed in some danger of doing.

 

 

So Albus insisted on making time to reread Malory and Dante.

 

And so he read finally by wandlight, _“… l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stele.”_

 

Albus closed the old book with a sigh of satisfaction.  He contemplated Dante’s spiritual journey from the lovesick boy of _La Vita Nuova_ to the intrepid voyager through Hell and Heaven.  Dante had been drawn on to greatness by his love for his dead Beatrice.  And, of course, by the wise guidance of his beloved mentor and master, Virgil.

 

Albus reached for the second volume, drawn back to the scene where Dante finally met his dead love and lost his beloved guide. Albus was struck anew by the strength and beauty of the man’s grief at losing his mentor, unconsoled even by the vision of Beatrice and the whole of the Earthly paradise:

 

_ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati scemi_

_di se, Virgilio dolcissimo patre,_

_Virgilio a cui per mia salute die’mi…._

 

_But Virgil had left us bereft of him, Virgil sweetest father, Virgil to whom I gave myself for my salvation, nor did all the ancient mother lost avail my cheeks washed with dew that they should not be stained again with tears._

 

A seemly tribute, from a young man to the mentor to whom he owed his redemption.   

 

Albus realized, rereading further, that Beatrice’s rebuke of her lapsed lover might almost have been addressed by Snape’s Lily to the boy now stumbling under Albus’s guidance.

 

_“He took himself from me and gave himself to another… following after false images of good which fulfill no promise…  He fell so low that all means for his salvation now came short except to show him the lost people.”_  

 

To show him the lost…  to send him through Hell itself.

 

And that beautiful line, the central message of the Purgatorio, that redemption must always be possible, but must be purchased with pain and travail equal to the sin…

 

_“perche sia colpa e duol d’un mesura.”_

 

That they must be of one measure, the sin and the suffering.

 

Albus dwelt on that necessity for balance.

 

But, he mused further, Dante’s Beatrice had been wrong in one matter; it was not her death that had lessened her influence so that her lover had strayed so damnably awry.  If anything the reverse:  it was only that she had “risen from flesh to spirit” that had hallowed her to become Dante’s spiritual guide. 

 

Surely that she had died young and lovely had been _why_ Beatrice had remained Dante’s lifelong inspiration?  Had the man who’d confessed that he’d lost his way “midway through the journey of our life” ever looked across the street to see a middle-aged housewife screeching at her children, the charm, as it were, would have been broken. 

 

He’d either have turned entirely cynical about the worth of love, or have turned his eyes and mind to another beautiful young girl.  Even if he’d managed the latter, the girl’s warmth would have inspired a more fleshly response from him, and he might never have journeyed on from carnal infatuation to that “love that moves the sun and other stars.” 

 

Plato’s sublimated love, that horse which can draw the lover from loving the Good he perceives in the beloved on to loving the Good for itself, had surely been made easier for Dante by Beatrice’s early death.  No disillusionment could afterwards visit him. No doubts of her moral infallibility, no registration of normal human foibles or flaws, no slow lessening of her physical radiance, could weaken her influence on him after that.

 

Dante had undoubtedly been lucky, though he surely had not seen it so. His misspent youth, his grief so bitter that death itself could hardly be more so…. _Tant’ e amar a che poco e piu morte._

 

Yet better far to have bitterly mourned his loved one’s death, than to have realized, bitterly, that his golden love was corrupt, and he himself corrupted by his love. 

 

Albus’s grip shifted on his wand, and the light brightened.  Yes, it was easy to determine that Dante had been lucky in comparison to _that_ fate.

 

But that fate was exceptional.  Better, too, that Dante should have seen his love dead, than the much more commonplace fate of seeing her worn down, made common, by a life of commonplace cares.  Her early death preserved her semblance of perfection—and thereby also the poet’s innocence in worshipping her so unreservedly.

 

And Madonna Beatrice had also been lucky, though she had undoubtedly not felt so as she felt her fatal fever mount.  But had she lived, she’d have been merely another Corinna or Amaryllis, the subject of a few ephemeral lyrics, and then discarded forever by her poet when he witnessed her mortal waist thicken and the crows-foot begin about her eyes. 

 

Dead, she became his immortal inspiration and his guide to eternal redemption.

 

Albus reflected finally on the _Paradiso’s_ last lines.  To have one’s desire and will moved solely by that greatest Love, the impersonal love that orders the sun and other stars….

 

Surely, as they said, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

 

And not possible, surely, while one gave one’s heart to a fellow mortal.  Another reason why Albus never had again, even had his first foray not shown his judgment in picking an object to be, well, untrustworthy. 

 

From the viewpoint of spiritual growth better, perhaps, to have loved and lost, than to have loved and kept.

 

 

His wand burned in his hand, its light reliable and cool.

 

 

Albus closed the book finally, and reached instead for Beedle.

 

 

Dante might be considered self-indulgence, but revisiting Beedle was a duty.  Surely, uniting Wand and Cloak, he’d see something more in the tale to guide him now….

 

He read by wandlight, “The third brother welcomed Death as an old friend,” and felt his own heart lift in recognition. 

 

Old and trusted friends.  Comrades. 

 

Allies.

 

But the feeling frayed away with the words, and there was nothing more, no stunning insight, to guide him.

 

So Albus must simply trust to his own best judgment, as he always had. 

 

*

 

Severus entered the headmaster’s office, and Albus gestured, smiling, at the chair with the tea-tray sitting cosily in front of it. 

 

The boy moved towards the chair, and Albus struck with a spell of disorientation.

 

The boy stumbled, his mind unguarded.

 

Albus entered it, and struck again with a different spell.  Not the Cruciatus; Albus had drawn the line at that. 

 

Blood ran down the black robes.

 

It seemed more elegant to use the boy’s own construction.  Moreover, this spell’s effects would weaken the boy progressively without further action on Albus’s part.

 

“A true test must come as a surprise,” he whispered in the boy’s mind while Severus flailed to erect his defenses.  “I shall Obliviate you at the end of this session, and we’ll try again.”

 

The boy managed to thrust Albus out, and even to exclude him entirely for a time while being tested by several further spells. 

 

But the blood loss eventually weakened him, and he fell.

 

Albus knelt and knit shut the oozing wounds.  Then he lifted the boy’s shoulders carefully from the floor and fed him the blood-replenishing draught.  Laced with pain-ease and with a calming draught, one of Albus’s own devising. 

 

Albus watched the drawn features smooth a little. 

 

He whispered, “Rest, and we’ll try again,” banishing the blood from the boy’s robes with a pass of his hand. 

 

Not of his wand—he hoped the boy appreciated this casual display of power.  But Severus was probably past noticing.  Indeed, the black eyes drifted shut as Albus’s hand combed through the boy’s hair and vanished the stickiness, along with the last of the iron-tang in the air.

 

Albus bent lower.  He breathed, “You must be perfect in your defenses.  To protect her, yes?”   He stroked a strand of lank hair off the white, wet face.  “I’m helping you to perfect your defenses.”

 

“Perfect,” Severus whispered, eyelashes fluttering and subsiding.  His head fell back against Albus’s shoulder.  “For her.  Helping….”  His fingers loosened, and his wand fell and rolled away. 

 

“I’m helping,” Albus confirmed.  “I’m helping.”

 

Albus let Severus rest for a time, absently stroking the relaxed face and murmuring approval and reassurances while he monitored the boy. 

 

Severus’s lips were fuller, softer, when not twisted in a sneer nor pinched in pain.  Of course, he was still uncompromisingly plain, despite those raven-black lashes against the pale cheek. 

 

When Severus’s color had finally returned to normal (or what passed for normal for him), Albus lowered him slowly to the floor and reached for the dropped wand, placing it back between the boy’s lax fingers.

 

He drew the Elder Wand.   _“Obliviate.  Rennervate.”_

 

 

And they tried again.

**Author's Note:**

> Really, I wanted perverse_idyll to write this; s/he would make of it a thing of poetry and horror. But the idea visited me.


End file.
